Makoto Kobayashi (小林 誠, Kobayashi Makoto?) (born April 7, 1944 in Nagoya, Japan) is a Japanese physicist known for his work on CP-violation who was awarded one quarter of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."

Toshihide Maskawa (or Masukawa) (益川 敏英, Masukawa Toshihide?) (born February 7, 1940 in Nagoya, Japan) is a Japanese theoretical physicist known for his work on CP-violation who was awarded one quarter of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."

Yoichiro Nambu (南部 陽一郎, Nambu Yōichirō?, born January 18, 1921) is a Japanese-born American physicist, currently a professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.